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The most important roles of a teacher
The most important roles of a teacher
Important roles of a teacher
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Seeing literature as useless is lacking to see the benefits of true aesthetics that it has to offer. Louis Rosenblatt emphasized the importance of teachers playing an important role in what students get out of the literary text and how they act upon it. What she is trying to explain to the readers is that each reading experience is unique to each person. An important part of the message she’s trying to get through to the readers is being referenced to students when she says, “He needs to understand himself; he needs to work out harmonious relationships with other people. He must achieve a philosophy, an inner center from which to view in perspective the shifting society about him; he will influence for good or ill its future development (3)”. Not only will the students need to associate all of …show more content…
Rosenblatt states that “The teacher will do neither literature nor students a service if he tries to evade ethical issues. He will be exerting some kind of influence positive or negative, through his success or failure in helping the student develop habits of thoughtful ethical judgment (17)”. From this quote what was received was that teachers should encourage students to get involved and not to force his own bias onto students. Teachers should offer student’s to have a creative approach and make personal connections and responses to their readings. This would not only influence them to read more, but also to help prepare them to use that critical sense of thinking in the future when they are assimilated into the real world as adults. Rosenblatt writes, “The teaching of literature inevitably involves the conscious or unconscious reinforcement of ethical attitudes (16)”. This would imply that the teachers would be psychologists in a way to liberate the minds of students and influence them to think critically of what can cause the behavior of characters due to human nature and surrounding
In “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read” (1999), Francine Prose argues that literature is not being exposed to and taught to high school students in the way that it should be and that students learn to “loathe” it due to this. Prose provides her audience with her personal experience as both a mother and a college professor along with her own research on the books and suggested purposed of them. She continues to expand on this topic in order to help illuminate the importance of literature itself, not being associated with personal experiences or morals. Prose’s position is valid and she makes her essay directed towards school boards, teachers, and students and continues to maintain a critical tone throughout her essay.
Can you imagine a world where literature did not exist? It’s very hard, nearly impossible. Literature plays a major role in shaping society. Literature is a word used to describe written or spoken material. Literature educates, informs, entertains and influences the reader or listener in a myriad of profound ways. Broadly speaking, “literature” is used to describe anything from creative writing to more technical or scientific works, but the term is most commonly used to refer to works of the creative imagination. Writers can change one’s beliefs, thoughts, actions, indeed their entire lives. In Northrop Frye’s The Educated Imagination, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and Plato’s The Republic, the writers use literature to utter the importance literature bestows on society. The three writers state their opinions using different methods to prove to the readers that their opinions are valid. Since each author has a unique writing style, most envision their writing with a relatable figure. Some would argue that Frye’s writing style is much like that of a textbook, very instructional and factual, Lamott reminded them of a conversation with a friend and that Plato’s writing style is very informative, akin to a professor carrying on a dialogue with an inquisitive student.
...hat of a father. The high level of sophistication and education in his teachers (factors he considers missing in his parents) makes him respect them much. The scholarship boy wishes his parents were exactly like the teachers (Rodriguez 16). Graff, on the other hand, critiques teachers. In his opinion, many literature teachers have lost touch with the passion for literature and are obsessed with professionalism, their journy to advance their careers and their fascination with analysis and theory (Graff 26).
Literature; it has compelled us, entertained us, educated us, and drove us to madness. It has served as life instruction, by using the characters as the lesson plan. It is sometimes blunt, sometimes ugly, and in Truman Capote’s case, is so gruesome that we do not dare forget it.
I think that the good novelist tries to provide his reader with vivid depictions of certain crucial and abiding patterns of human existence. This he attempts to do by reducing the chaos of human experience to artistic form. And when successful he provides the reader with a fresh vision of reality. For then through the symbolic action of his characters and plot he enables the reader to share forms of experience not immediately his own. And thus the reader is able to recognize the meaning and value of the presented experience as a whole. (Kostelanetz 10)
Bradbury attacks loss of literature in the society of Fahrenheit 451 to warn our current society about how literature is disappearing and the effects on the people are negative. While Montag is at Faber’s house, Faber explains why books are so important by saying, “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores” (79). Faber is trying to display the importance of books and how without them people lack quality information. In Electronics and the Decline of Books by Eli Noam it is predicted that “books will become secondary tools in academia, usurped by electronic media” and the only reason books will be purchased will be for leisure, but even that will diminish due to electronic readers. Books are significant because they are able to be passed down through generation. While online things are not concrete, you can not physically hold the words. Reading boost creativity and imagination and that could be lost by shifting to qui...
In literature, schools often teach students the morals of a book rather than actual knowledge that they should acquire in the classroom such as literary devices or sentence structure. In Francine Prose’s, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read,” she discusses how teaching students to only focus on the moral of a book instead of the many different literary elements it contains, effects their passion for reading. “A friend’s daughter’s English teacher informed a group of parents that the only reason to study Huckleberry Finn was to decide whether it was a racist text.” (94) This acknowledges that schools do not focus on important aspects of the books. The main point that Prose forms in her essay is that students are no longer required to read a piece of literature in depth, they only have to read to identify and learn the moral, when
Something else that must be mentioned in order to understand the evils of school censorship are facts censors ignore; the first being literary quality. When they chose to censor a book they do not take into account the educational value of the book. How can one say a book does not belong in schools if they do not know what lessons it teaches? The second key element ignored is the manner in which teachers lead students to interact with texts. They g...
In his essay “Disliking Books,” he examines the standard that many teachers hold. The author believes that the view of other teachers is that “leaving me alone with literary texts themselves, uncontaminated by the interpretations and theories of professional critics would enable me to get on the closest possible terms with those texts” (Graff 26). Teachers, as Graff believes, leave their students with only their own interpretations and perspectives on a text. This does not encourage learning or critical thinking, but hinders students’ abilities to improve and develop ideas their own. Without guidance, students cannot delve deeper into the subjects in which they are learning. Alternatively, in his “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” Graff reveals isolation in perspective of teachers through his own experience with teachers holding opposing viewpoints and theorizes “teachers in modern periods need nonmodernists (and vice versa) in order to make their subjects intelligible to their students” Graff 340). Hence, without elaborating on a subject from all possible viewpoints, a student will have a limited understanding of what it is and how to apply it in their life. Each student will take a different standpoint on what is said, and if they disagree, it will slip through their
As it is inevitable that children will grow up to be exposed to the world's evils, which are shown in novels like Fahrenheit 451, teaching the context and meaning of those evils in a learning environment allows for more of a educated understanding and a fuller grasp on the issues within. By reading controversial novels in schools, students in middle and high school will benefit tremendously by being exposed to them in a learning environment. Although teachers and parents have control as to what the students are exposed to at a young age, Fahrenheit 451 should not be banned from middle and high schools as it depicts the effects of censorship on a dystopian society through use of controversial material which doubles as
This burden often falls on teachers. The purpose of this research paper is to discuss censorship in schools and to argue that the censorship of books in the high school English curriculum is limiting and takes away literature that is meaningful to students. How a Book is Censored Brinkley describes a few actions that can lead to the censoring of a book in a school or school system: An expression of concern is simply a question about the material with overtones of disapproval; an oral complaint is an oral challenge to the contents of a work; a written complaint is a formal written challenge to the school about the contents of a work; and a public attack is a public statement challenging the contents of a work that is made outside of the school, usually to the media to gain support for further action (1999). Brinkley also points out an important difference between selection and censorship: Selection is the act of carefully choosing works for an English course that will be age-appropriate, meaningful, and fulfill objectives, while censorship is the act of excluding works that some con... ...
From reading Alice in Wonderland to now, I have grown to appreciate literature much more. At the beginning of the year, I read purely because it was assigned for me to read, and I only read for important events and story plots. When reading Alice in Wonderland for the first time, I missed everything that Lewis Carroll was trying to convey to the reader. I had no idea that he had written Alice in Wonderland with the intention of preparing children for the real world. I thought it was just a story full of random events and nonsense, but after my realization of a deeper meaning, I grew to appreciate his efforts. From then on from Beowulf to the Fairie Queene, I have learned to see literary works as more than just stories but a...
Literature has many purposes, and opens doors to unique worlds. Through Literature, we discover ourselves and world time and again.
Literature is rarely, if ever, merely a story that the author is trying to tell. It is imperative that the reader digs deep within the story to accurately analyze and understand the message the author is trying to portray. Authors tend to hide themselves in their stories. The reader can learn about the author through literary elements such as symbolism, diction, and structure. A good example of this is Robert Frost’s poems The Road Not Taken and Nothing Gold can Stay in which he uses ordinary language unlike many other poets that became more experimental (Frost, Robert. “1.”).
“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become,” said C.S. Lewis, noted author. This quote, to me, is the most appropriate description of the importance of literature in our lives. Literature reminds us of stories, epics, sacred scriptures and classical works of the ancient and modern times, in which the book To Kill a Mockingbird clearly does. Literature is defined as the body of written works of a language, period or culture, produced by scholars and researchers, specialized in a given field. Why is literature important? Well, let’s see as stated in the quotation by C.S. Lewis, literature not only describes reality but also adds to it. Yes, literature is not merely a depiction of reality; it is rather a value-addition. Literary works are portrayals of the thinking patterns and social norms prevalent in society. They are an illustration of the different facets of common man's life. Literary works serve as a food for thought and a tonic for imagination and creativity. Exposing an individual to good literary works, is equivalent to providing him/her with the finest of educational opportunities. On the other hand, the lack of exposure to literary works is equal to depriving an individual from an opportunity to grow as an individual. To Kill a Mockingbird provides its readers with the ‘finest of educational opportunities’ and that is why it is an important literary work. Harper Lee’s book is a powerful literary work because of the following literary devices employed: Setting, Allegory, and point of view. However before one can dissect the devices used, one must h...